Page:The Working and Management of an English Railway.djvu/133

 laid down at eleven different places on the main lines; so that a train may run through, if need be, between London and Carlisle, or Holyhead, without once having occasion to pull up at a water column. Fig. 23 shows, by means of a diagram, the manner in which a tender picks up water from the feed-trough while in motion.

The Crewe works, where the locomotive engines of the London and North-Western Company are manufactured and kept in repair, constitute the largest railway works in the world, and have come, in process of time, to be looked upon as one of the most interesting sights to be seen by almost every Royal or distinguished personage who has visited our shores for many years past, as well as by engineers and railway officials from all parts of the world, who have visited England for the purpose of acquiring information as to the methods and processes of railway working in this country. A brief description of the works, and of what is done there, will not, therefore, be out of place in a work of this character, which professes to give some account of the means and appliances which have resulted in causing a first-class English railway to be regarded as a model for the rail- ways of the civilized world.

The works were originally established in 1843 for the purpose of repairing the engines, carriages, and waggons of the Grand Junction Railway, which was afterwards incorporated in the London and North- Western system, in 1846. As the locomotive requirements gradually increased, the carriage and waggon works were by degrees removed to Wolverton and Earlestown, respectively, and, since the year 1865, Crewe has been exclusively given up to the mechanical and engineering departments, and has become the chief centre of the